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Lightning Field,
Scribner

Excerpt

from Eat the
Document by Dana Spiotta

PART ONE
1972
By Heart

It is easy for a life to become
unblessed.

Mary, in particular, understood
this. Her mistakes -- and they were legion -- were not
lost on her. She knew all about the undoing of a life:
take away, first of all, your people. Your family. Your
lover. That was the hardest part of it. Then put yourself
somewhere unfamiliar, where (how did it go?) you are
a complete unknown. Where you possess nothing. Okay,
then -- this was the strangest part -- take away your
history, every last bit of it.

What else?

She discovered, despite what
people may imagine, having nothing to lose is a lot
like having nothing. (But there was something to lose,
even at this point, something huge to lose, and that
was why this unknown, homeless state never resembled
freedom.)
The unnerving, surprisingly creepy and unpleasantly
psychedelic part -- you lose your name.

Mary finally sat on a bed in
a motel room that very first night after she had taken
a breathless train ride under darkening skies and through
increasingly unfamiliar landscape. Despite her anxiety
she still felt lulled by the tracks clicking at intervals
beneath the train; an odd calm descended for whole minutes
in a row until the train pulled into another station
and she waited for someone to come over to her, finger-pointing,
some unbending and unsmiling official. In between these
moments of near calm and all the other moments, she
practiced appearing normal. Only when she tried to move
could you notice how shaky she was. That really undid
her, her visible unsteadiness. She tried not to move.

Five state borders, and then
she was handing over the cash for the room -- anonymous,
cell-like, quiet. She clutched her receipt in her hand,
stared at it, September 15, 1972, and thought, This
is the first day of it. Room Twelve, the first place
of it.